‘World’s priority’ stopping Ebola: UN
Print Edition
THE United States prepared yesterday to fly home a cameraman who contracted Ebola in Liberia, as the head of the UN’s response agency headed to Sierra Leone to lead the fight against an epidemic he called the world’s “highest priority.”
Ashoka Mukpo, 33, who was working as a freelancer for NBC news, discovered he was running a fever on Wednesday, his network said, and is in quarantine in a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) treatment center.
Hired by NBC only three days ago, he is the fourth American to contract Ebola in Liberia.
“The doctors are optimistic about his prognosis,” Mukpo’s father Mitchell Levy said in a message to family and friends quoted by NBC, adding that his son had worked on humanitarian projects in Liberia for several years.
Anthony Banbury, head of the UN Mission on Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), travelled to Sierra Leone yesterday for the second leg of a tour of the three hardest-hit nations.
“The only way we will end this crisis is if we end every single last case of Ebola so there is no more risk of transmission to anyone, and when that’s accomplished, UNMEER will go home,” he told journalists on Thursday in the Liberian capital Freetown.
The UN envoy said he was intent on contributing to “the highest priority for the international community — for the whole world, not just the United Nations”.
US health officials meanwhile were monitoring 100 people in Texas who had potential contact with a Liberian man diagnosed with Ebola. Four family members were also ordered to stay home.
The man — the first person to be diagnosed with the deadly disease on US soil — flew from Liberia and arrived in Texas on September 20 to visit family.
Another victim of the virus, a Ugandan doctor who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone was hospitalized yesterday in Frankfurt, becoming the second victim of the deadly virus to be treated in Germany.
“The patient is an employee of an Italian NGO, he has Ugandan nationality and has worked as a doctor in Sierra Leone,” said Stefan Gruettner, senior affairs minister for the Hesse region where Frankfurt is located.
His health is “very serious but stable,” said Tom Wolf, head of the infectious disease center at Frankfurt University Hospital.
Ebola has so far killed 3,338 people out of 7,178 infected, most of them in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to the latest figures from WHO.
The World Health Organization said in its latest situation update there was still a “significant shortfall” in capacity in west Africa, with 1,500 more beds needed in Liberia and 450 in Sierra Leone.
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